Peak Fascism

Peaked Oil, Climate Chaos and Eroding Liberties

part of the antidote to Peak Liberties is to figure out
how we could use the remaining oil to have permaculture
for nine billion people - the choice would require shifting
the military budget away from permanent war

The best analyses of Peak Oil and of global warming each conclude that the problem would have to be addressed a decade or two before it manifests at full strength - yet both problems are here, now. Perhaps the truth is that the shadow government (corporations and the military industrial complex) did not want to deal with these problems because the solutions are inherently decentralized and would require relaxation of centralized power control systems. Since we missed the opportunity to solve these issues as gently as possible, governments are instituting a global surveillance police state to suppress dissent as the oil that runs the show becomes more scarce and expensive, and climate change reduces available food and water supplies.

Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks
NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism
Posted by Nafeez Ahmed
Friday 14 June 2013

In addition to this website and what it is saying I would like to say that all political parties are conning us and I wouldn’t vote for any of them. Apart from a small glimmer of hope from the Maori Party, all the other parties have treated the ramifications of peak oil with treasonable contempt, by either ignoring it altogether or understating the disaster we all face. Passing draconian laws is their way of placing the necessary controls on this society before resource depletion really kicks in. This is their way of trying to maintain their positions, when the reality is they will not even be able to answer the phone. Hang on for an interesting 2008.
-- Robert Atack

The prospect of global wars driven by climate change is not something often discussed publicly by our political leaders.
But according to one of America's top military analysts, governments in the US and UK are already being briefed by their own military strategists about how to prepare for a world of mass famine, floods of refugees and even nuclear conflicts over resources.
Gwynne Dyer is a military analyst and author who served in three navies and has held academic posts at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and at Oxford.
Speaking about his latest book, Climate Wars, he says there is a sense of suppressed panic from the scientists and military leaders. ....

He says a fall in crops and food production means there will be refugees, people who are desperate.

"It may mean the collapse in the global trade of food because while some countries still have enough, there is still a global food shortage," he said.

"If you can't buy food internationally and you can't raise enough at home, what do you do? You move. So refugee pressures - huge ones - are one of the things that drives these security considerations."

In Climate Wars, even the most hopeful scenarios about the impact of climate change have hundreds of millions of people dying of starvation, mass displacement of people and conflict between countries competing for basic resources like water.

"India and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed countries. All of the agriculture in Pakistan and all of the agriculture in northern India depend on glacier-fed rivers that come off the Himalayas from the Tibetan plateau. Those glaciers are melting," Dr Dyer said.

"They're melting according to Chinese scientists to 7 per cent a year, which means they're half gone in 10 years.

"India has a problem with this. Pakistan faces an absolutely lethal emergency because Pakistan is basically a desert with a braid of rivers running through it.

"Those rivers all start with one exception in Indian-controlled territory and there's a complex series of deals between the two countries about who gets to take so much water out of the river. Those deals break down when there's not that much water in the rivers."

And then you have got the prospect of a nuclear confrontation, Dr Dyer says.

"It's unthinkable but yet it's entirely possible. So these are the prices you start to pay if you get this wrong," he said.

"Some of them, actually, I'm afraid we've already got them wrong in the sense that there is going to be some major climate change."

Dr Dyer explains the least alarmist scenario for the next couple of decades still involves enormous pressures on the US border.

"That border's going to be militarised. I think there's almost no question about it because the alternative is an inundation of the United States by what will be, effectively, climate refugees," he said. ....

But the real insight into the US study is that the more severe climate change scenario is the one that analysts think is the more likely one.

"And it's not just the analysts. I spent the past year doing a very high-speed self-education job on climate change but I think I probably talked to most of the senior people in the field in a dozen countries," Dr Dyer said.

More than 100 countries face political chaos and mass migration in
global warming catastrophe

By Robin McKie, science editor

A total of 46 nations and 2.7 billion people are now at high risk of
being overwhelmed by armed conflict and war because of climate
change. A further 56 countries face political destabilisation,
affecting another 1.2 billion individuals.

This stark warning will be outlined by the peace group International
Alert in a report, A Climate of Conflict, this week. Much of Africa,
Asia and South America will suffer outbreaks of war and social
disruption as climate change erodes land, raises seas, melts glaciers
and increases storms, it concludes. Even Europe is at risk.

'Climate change will compound the propensity for violent conflict,
which in turn will leave communities poorer and less able to cope
with the consequences of climate change,' the report states.

The worst threats involve nations lacking resources and stability to
deal with global warming, added the agency's secretary-general, Dan
Smith. 'Holland will be affected by rising sea levels, but no one
expects war or strife,' he told The Observer. 'It has the resources
and political structure to act effectively. But other countries that
suffer loss of land and water and be buffeted by increasingly fierce
storms will have no effective government to ensure corrective
measures are taken. People will form defensive groups and battles
will break out.'

Consider Peru, said Smith. Its fresh water comes mostly from glacier
meltwater. But by 2015 nearly all Peru's glaciers will have been
removed by global warming and its 27 million people will nearly all
lack fresh water. If Peru took action now, it could offset the
impending crisis, he added. But the country has little experience of
effective democracy, suffers occasional outbreaks of insurgency, and
has border disputes with Chile and Ecuador. The result is likely to
be 'chaos, conflict and mass migration'.

In Africa, rivers such as the Niger and Monu are key freshwater
resources passing through many nations. As droughts worsen and more
water is extracted from them conflicts will be inevitable.

In Europe, most countries are currently considered stable enough to
cope with global warming, apart from the Balkans; wars have left
countries such as Serbia and Montenegro politically weakened. As
temperatures rise and farmland is reduced, population pressures will
trigger violence that authorities will be unable to contain.

Some nations on the risk map, such as Russia, may cause surprise.
'Moscow's control of Russia as a whole will not be undermined by
global warming,' said Smith. 'But loss of farmland in some regions
will lead to local rebellions like those already triggered in
Chechnya.'

Conflict triggered by climate change is not a vague threat for coming
years, he added. 'It is already upon us.'

What does global warming have to do with global peace? The globe may find out sooner than we think, experts say.

"Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on Earth as we know it to be," retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, former U.S. Army chief of staff, told a congressional panel last month.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee agrees. In awarding the prize Friday to climate campaigner Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored network of scientists, the Norwegian committee said the stresses of a changing global environment may heighten the "danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."

Those like Sullivan who study the issues point particularly to the effect of drought and altered climate patterns on food and water supplies, leading to shortages that could spur huge, destabilizing migrations of people internationally.

In a report in May, scientists advising the German government noted specific scenarios that could upend the lives of millions, driving them across borders to overwhelm other lands.

"The dieback of the Amazon rain forest or the loss of the Asian monsoon could have incalculable consequences for the societies concerned," said the German Advisory Council on Global Change.

In some cases, potential backlashes from warming weren't foreseen even a few years ago. One example: The stunningly swift shrinking of Arctic Ocean ice in recent summers has drawn attention to looming international disputes over rights to the newly open seas.

The unpredictability of when, where and how some of the changes will occur has frustrated Pentagon planners and others trying to prepare.

A 2003 report commissioned by the Pentagon warned that abrupt climate change "could potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles and even war due to resource constraints."

But that study's scenario for abrupt change hinged in part on fears that the Atlantic's Gulf Stream current might slow, chilling northern Europe and eastern North America and curtailing food harvests. Now, however, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it's "very unlikely" the current will slow abruptly.

Unpredictability was dispelled elsewhere in the panel's reports this year. It found, for example, that warmer and drier conditions are already shortening the growing season in Africa's Sahel, a conflict-ridden region long burdened by food and water shortages.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the German scientists cited other potential "hot spots":

Egypt's low-lying Nile Delta, where the livelihoods of millions may be at risk from rising sea levels and salinization of agricultural areas.
The Asian subcontinent, where the retreat of Himalayan glaciers will dry up downstream water supplies and where rising seas and stronger cyclones will threaten tens of millions on the Bay of Bengal coast.
The poor nations of Central America, where more intense hurricanes could severely damage economies, destabilize political systems and send streams of uprooted people toward the U.S. border.
Global efforts have faltered, however, in trying to cut back emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases -- in part because the Bush administration opposes such internationally mandated reductions.

If, amid recriminations and finger-pointing, governments fail to unite on global warming, "climate change will draw ever-deeper lines of division and conflict in international relations," the German report said.

from Ross Gelbspan, "The Heat is On: the
Climate Crisis, the Cover-up, the Prescription"

The Coming Permanent State of Emergency

Long before the systems of the planet buckle, democracy will disintegrate
under the stress of ecological disasters and their social consequences.

Two different men independently expressed this chilling insight to
me - William Ruckelshaus, the first head of the EPA and now CEO of Browning-Ferris
Industries; and Dr. Henry Kendall of MIT, the recipient of the 1990
Nobel Prize for physics ...

When I first heard the remark, it seemed shocking yet somehow irrelevant
to the climate crisis. Only after the thought had burrowed its way into
my consciousness did the connection become apparent: If we alter the
balance of the natural relationships that support our lives, those changes
will ripple through the complex relationships that make up our society.
....

Diminishing food and water supplies already pose a grave threat to
the survival of democracy in the developing world. As climate instability
intensifies, that threat is bound to become reality. "The world's
food supply," says Kendall, "must double within the next thirty
years to feed the population, which will double within the next sixy
years. Otherwise, before the middle of the next century - as many countries
in the developing world run out of enough water to irrigate their crops
- population will outrun its food supply, and you will see chaos. All
we need is another hit from climate change - a series of droughts or
crop-destroying rains - and we're looking down the mouth of a cannon."

But even before the ravages of climate change have become widespread,
Kendall believes, it may already be too late to head off pervasive famine
and social disruption ...

The outcome of this deterioration is loaded with totalitarian potential.
In the mid-1980s, a thirty-year growth in global food supplies reached
its peak. Food production is now declining. Today only two of the world's
183 nations -- the United States and Canada -- are major exporters of
grain. Yet as the world's population expands at an almost exponential
rate, the earth is losing nearly 1 percent of its agricultural lands
every year.

Nor is the situation with available water much better. In many arid
parts of the world, freshwater resources are becoming overtaxed. They
are depleted by industrial overuse and by the demands of growing concentrations
of people in the cities of the developing world. United Nations secretary-general
Boutros Boutros-Ghali was deadly serious when he noted, a few years
ago, that the next war in the Middle East will be fought not over oil
but over water.

-- from Ross Gelbspan, "The Heat is On: the Climate Crisis, the
Cover-up, the Prescription"

note: the "water wars" prediction for the Middle East was slightly
premature, as the Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) was still fought over
oil, although Iraq is the most water rich Arab country (except for Egypt).
A detailed analysis of the simultaneous impacts of climate change and
depleting fossil fuels on world food production does not seem to be in
the public domain - but the outcome is unlikely to be a happy one under
any scenario. Much of the grains grown in North America are fed to farm
animals, which is the most inefficient method of food production. Clearly
any future scenario that attempts to provide nutrition for everyone in
the world will require a world-wide vegan (or close to it) diet. The
days of heavy meat consumption by the wealthiest segment of the human
family while billions are malnourished cannot be sustained into the era
of expensive energy, climate change and increasing desertification.This is not about ideology - but rather, about survival.

Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?
The Global Energy Race and Its Consequences (Part 1)
By Michael T. Klare
posted January 14, 2007

It has once again become fashionable for the dwindling supporters
of President Bush's futile war in Iraq to stress the danger of "Islamo-fascism"
and the supposed drive by followers of Osama bin Laden to establish
a monolithic, Taliban-like regime -- a "Caliphate" -- stretching
from Gibraltar to Indonesia. The President himself has employed this
term on occasion over the years, using it to describe efforts by Muslim
extremists to create "a totalitarian empire that denies all political
and religious freedom." While there may indeed be hundreds, even
thousands, of disturbed and suicidal individuals who share this delusional
vision, the world actually faces a far more substantial and universal
threat, which might be dubbed: Energo-fascism, or the militarization
of the global struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy.

Petro-Power and the Nuclear Renaissance
Two Faces of an Emerging Energo-fascism (Part 2)
By Michael T. Klare
posted January 16, 2007

Not "Islamo-fascism" but "Energo-fascism" -- the
heavily militarized global struggle over diminishing supplies of energy
-- will dominate world affairs (and darken the lives of ordinary citizens)
in the decades to come. This is so because top government officials
globally are increasingly unwilling to rely on market forces to satisfy
national energy needs and are instead assuming direct responsibility
for the procurement, delivery, and allocation of energy supplies. The
leaders of the major powers are ever more prepared to use force when
deemed necessary to overcome any resistance to their energy priorities.
In the case of the United States, this has required the conversion of
our armed forces into a global oil-protection service; two other significant
expressions of emerging Energo-fascism are: the arrival of Russia as
an "energy superpower" and the repressive implications of
plans to rely on nuclear power.

Neo-Feudalism: Serfs in the Service Economy

"That song [Call it Democracy] came from the time of neo-conservatism,
when governments supported business at the cost of lives and nobody gave
a
shit. We have since moved
on to neo-liberalism, when governments support business at the cost of
lives and nobody gives a shit; and I see we're moving on to neo-feudalism,
that's the service economy coming at you. We will all serve. I'm not
quite sure who we're serving. There's a sort of mystery there; are we
serving Bill Gates? I think not, he's too visible. Somebody else? Maybe
you're sitting right here (in the audience). Are you out there? Fuck
off, if you are. (positive audience response) And if you're not, well
we missed a grand opportunity to level with each other."
-- Bruce Cockburn, from a live performance at Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada,
25 March 2000 www.cockburnproject.net/songs&music/atcid.html

A warning that some fascist fringe groups look forward to Peak Oil
chaos as an opportunity to gain power. The article's mention of the neo-cons
misses the fact that their program is rooted in their understanding of
the implications of Peak Oil (as described masterfully in "Crossing
the Rubicon").

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
PEAK OIL AND CIVIL LIBERTIES - IN THE SIGHTS OF THE GUN

posted by Bruce Gagnon

George W. Bush is on a campaign to justify his war on the American
people. He and his team are now appearing everywhere to convince us
that spying on us is "good for us." They are saying that intercepting
domestic communications is legal. The big lie, repeated often enough,
becomes the truth. And it wears the opposition down. Bush is big time
into showing all of us that he "won't give up." He wants to
protect us.
I believe this is the first-step in conditioning the American people
to get used to martial law. We are soon to have a Supreme Court that
will give the "president" maximum authority. They will make
Bush the king and put the "law of the land" ribbon on top
for good measure.
This must be done because of the coming economic turndown that is bound
to happen when you are spending $500 billion on a war in Iraq and jobs
are leaving the country the way they are. In the past 10 years over
$1.3 trillion of American companies have been bought by foreign investors.
The U.S. economy is hanging by a thread.
Add to that the reality of peak oil and you can see we are in the sights
of the loaded gun. Peak oil means that the world is running out of fossil
fuels and experts predict that prices are going to rise for oil, and
oil based products, dramatically in the next few years. When that happens
food production becomes overwhelmingly expensive, home heating oil becomes
overwhelmingly expensive, driving cars or flying becomes overwhelmingly
expensive. The economy hits the wall. The people begin to yell and scream
and hit the streets. By that time Bush has set in motion the shutdown
of freedom of speech in the USA.
Saudi Arabia is reported to be pumping 70% water out of its oil wells
these days. When that happens you know we are in trouble.
The way out won't be biofuels - the growing of corn and turning it to
fuel. We are going to need all available arable land for food production,
which will suddenly be very labor intensive, as oil for tractors and
fertilizers becomes cost prohibitive.
We are going to need massive installation of solar but right now Japan
is the world's primary producer of solar panels and Germany is buying
them all up. There are waiting lists to purchase solar panels. We need
to expand solar production and windmill production in the U.S. right
now!
When gas hits $7, $8, $10 per gallon we will need an alternative. Hell,
we need one now. It is called public mass transit. We need local, state,
and national rail systems to go under production today. Forget trying
to power your car with vegetable oil. We need trains. We need to get
on our bicycles.
Conservation will become a major source of energy. What we don't use
won't have to be replaced. This is something that the energy wasting
U.S. economy will have to learn and learn fast.
The corporate and political world will suggest we go nuclear so we can
continue the mass produced, centralized power system. And when electrical
power costs hit the wall, many people will want to go for that quick
and "easy" solution. Already we are seeing the early stages
of a campaign by the nuclear power industry to prepare the people for
this "solution." But nuclear power is not a solution. The
massive amount of nuclear waste will remain a huge problem. And we need
to move away from "centralized" power. We need to decentralize
power creation and distribution. The way to do that is with solar and
wind. The problem with solar and wind is that the big corporations can't
hook up the meter to it and make you pay them every month the way they
now do with coal, oil and nuclear.
The next ten years are going to be very difficult times for us. That
is why we all must begin to talk today about where we must go before
it is too late. We must talk to each other daily about solar, wind power,
and public transportation. We must turn our front and back yards, now
heavy fertilized useless green lawns, into healthy organic gardens producing
our food. Local food production will literally mean survival.
The sooner we begin to turn this ship the better our future will be.
Discount these warnings as ravings of a mad man at your own peril.
Fight for free speech, the right to peacefully assemble, freedom from
unreasonable searches and seizures now before it is too late. Bush,
and his right-wing Extreme Court, are coming with the clamp down.

Meantime, back at the Police State
With the new National Security Service signed into law: We can expect
a large number of side shows to be developed in coming months because
of the long wave economic train wreck forming up. Specifically, as the
economy softens, it will become more and more difficult for the Powers
That Be (PTB) to hold onto the reigns of power. As a result, we read
with interest this morning that the Pentagon's planners are considering
beefing up domestic security. This is almost amusing to the well read
student of history: Clearly the agenda has nothing to do with terrorism
and is more likely to be the formation of military strength internally
to attempt maintenance of order after the markets crash and lynch mobs
take to the street looking for banksters and crooked politicians who
are squandering the public's trust as we speak. It will also be used
as the forerunner of the draft, we consider a near certainty by mid-2006.
Look for news out of Afghanistan and Iraq to be main drivers, but the
not-so-well hidden agenda is building up a protection unit for the PTB
to keep "order."

NOW that everyone knows just about all they need to know
about Blair's devious methods to procure Bush's oil war, and that he
will be unlikely to pay a political price for it, those of us who understood
from the outset that Iraq would be attacked can take no satisfaction
to be proved right.
The latest revelations and discourse are a side-show. It is now public
knowledge that Blair's decision was made at the unelected Bush's ranch
in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002 [pictured] - a year before hostilities
began. The ensuing activity, futile as it turned out, was to secure
legal "cover" and a political pretext. The current prattle
about democracy and Blair's "contempt for due process" is
unnecessarily ad hominem. It is unlikely that any US puppet-politician
would have left Crawford without clear instructions; Bush was just lucky
he had the messianic Blair. Michael Howard's remarkable public confession
that he would have invaded even without WMD is itself revelatory of
this - it is not "democracy" that is under threat (we've never
had it) but constitutionality itself.What is important to understand is why this drift to totalitarianism
on both sides of the Atlantic is now likely to accelerate. We are now
at "peak-oil" or very close to it. Hereafter, capitalism's
life-blood is ebbing. There is a direct correlation between oil price
rises, military budget increases, weapons deployment, warfare and covert
operations around the world, as nation states gear up to secure, by
whatever means, diminishing oil supplies. Rumsfeld has won the battle
to control US intelligence operations, Negroponte is the new national
intelligence director and Bolton is going to the UN.
We are approaching the end-game. Since early 1999, oil prices have risen
about 400%. Recent oil-price rises have taken $90m a day out of the
US consumer economy, itself a bubble sustained by foreign debt, much
of it from China. China's own oil demand is expected to grow by 33%
this year. Nations are expanding their economies as fast as possible
to generate cash and liquidity as a means of securing more oil from
a diminishing pool. A descending vicious cycle has begun.
Oil industry analyst Jan Lundberg has recently written: "The end
of abundant, affordable oil is in sight, and the implications are colossal
. . . This means that the next tough oil shortage, even if it is not
acknowledged as a post-peak-oil extraction phenomenon of diminishing
supply, will cripple the globalised economy." When this happens,
the unmet world demand of more than 80 million barrels a day will result
in market paralysis with prices too high for the wheels of commerce
and even daily living in "advanced" societies. This will result
in massive civil unrest. Societies less dependent on oil will fare better.
Those dependent on it for food, work, transport and heat will disintegrate.
On the foreign front, Iraq was a (futile) attempt to delay this. On
the parallel domestic fronts, the US Patriot Act and New Labour's
draconian erosion of civil liberties, the evisceration of the BBC and
the degradation of cabinet government are manifestations of the preparations
for the end of oil.
Some straws in the wind: China is already buying and hoarding 60% of
the world's commodities: oil, cement, aluminium, copper, zinc, manganese,
steel, coal, gold, silver, etc. Last year it bought 90% of the world's
steel output and announced a 12.6% increase in its defence budget for
next year, pushing it into an overt arms race with the US. This has
stimulated the China-Taiwan flashpoint as China has enacted a Taiwan
secession law, countered by dangerous rhetoric from the US, Japan and
Taiwan.
Recent Sino-Japanese sabre-rattling is only tangentially about school
history texts. We are witnessing the opening shots in the war for control
of oil-shipping routes. China and India have agreed to hold first-ever
joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean as the former is beginning
attempts to control the strategic Straits of Malacca through which 80%
of its imported oil passes. Just wait until China calls in its US debts
and starts selling dollars.
These are the real issues around which Iraq and Labour were skewered,
and no-one in this absurd general election is talking about them, far
less confronting them. That does not mean to say that the elite
aren't thinking about them. The evidence suggests they are thinking
about little else.
Dr John O'Dowd, 3 Downfield Gardens, Bothwell.

What if, just if, there really were threats that we, the sheeple, aren't
aware of, that warrant a near complete subversion of democracy?

What is some kind of extra-terrestrial threat that requires setting
up a global hegemon as a military dictatorship to confront, or manage,
the threat? [note: maybe, maybe not - but there is certainly
a big public relations effort to get a lot of people to believe this]

What if technology is developing so fast that global human security,
not just national security, assessments describe it as spinning out
of control, and requires a near totaltarian blanket of repression to
try to brunt any damange?

What if threat assessments have determined that peak oil,
climate change, environmental devastation, have the potential of throwing
society into chaos, and that the only way to keep it together is, as
Noam Chomsky has suggested, a dictatorship.

Because, frankly, if these things could happen, then I might be persuaded
to allow them to happen.

To paraphrase glorious leader Bush Jr., I wouldn't mind living in
a dictatorship if I was untouchable.

The choice we face ... is whether to wean ourselves off of oil -- to
quickly evolve a new economy and a new basis for civilization -- or
to continue to secure stable supplies from the rest of the world by
force.
... the alternative consequences of each choice could not be more dramatic.
Weaning ourselves off of cheap oil, while not easy, will help ensure
the vitality of the American economy and the survival of its political
system. Choosing the route of force will almost certainly destroy the
economy and doom America’s short experiment in democracy.
To date, we have chosen the second alternative: to secure oil by force.
The evidence of its consequences are all around us. They include the
titanic US budget and trade deficits funding a gargantuan, globally-deployed
military and the Patriot Act and its starkly anti-democratic rescissions
of civil liberties. There is little time left to change this choice
before its consequences become irreversible.

.... Bush is using the self-ratcheting “War on Terror”
to effect even more sweeping, perhaps permanent rescissions of civil
liberties.
Under the Patriot Act, a person can be arrested without probable cause,
held indefinitely without being charged, tried without a lawyer or a
jury, sentenced without the opportunity to appeal, and put to death--all
without notification of…anybody. This is simply a Soviet Gulag
and it has been rationalized by the hysterical over-hyping of the War
on Terror. The fact that it is not yet widespread does not diminish
the more important fact that it has been put in place precisely in anticipation
of such procedures needing to be being carried out on a mass scale in
the future. The broader implications of the Patriot Acts go far beyond
the abusive treatment of criminals or terrorists. Their portent can
be glimpsed in the language used to justify them. When Attorney General
John Ashcroft testified on behalf of the Act, he stated, “…those
who oppose us are providing aid and comfort to the enemy.” These
are carefully chosen words. “Aid and comfort to the enemy”
are the words used in the Constitution to define Treason, the most fateful
of crimes against the state. In other words, protest against the government
-- the singular right without which America would not even exist --
is now being defined as trying to overthrow the government.
And by the internal logic of a global Oil Empire, this is entirely reasonable.
The needs of the people of any one country must be subordinated to the
larger agenda of Empire itself. This is what the Romans learned in 27
B.C. when Augustus proclaimed himself Emperor. It was the end of the
Roman Republic and the disappearance of representative government on
earth for almost 1,700 years, until the English Civil Wars in the 1600s.
That is the reality we are confronting today--offering up our democracy
in propitiation to an Empire for Oil. It will be a fateful, irreversible
decision.

.... The alternative to Grab the Oil is to dispense with the hobbling
dependency on oil itself and to quickly wean the country off of it.
Call it the path of Energy Reconfiguration. It is to declare
a modern day Manhattan Project aimed at minimizing the draw down in
the world’s finite stocks of oil, extending their life, and mitigating
the calamity inherent in their rapid exhaustion. It means building a
physical infrastructure to the economy that is based on an alternative
to oil. And it means doing this, not unilaterally or militarily as the
US is doing now, but in peaceful partnership with other countries of
the world, the other counties in our shared global lifeboat
that are also threatened by the end of oil.
In more specific terms, energy reconfiguration means retrofitting all
of the nation’s buildings, both commercial and residential, to
double their energy efficiency. It means a crash program to shift the
transportation system -- cars, trucks -- to a basis that uses perhaps
half as much oil per year. This is well within reach of current technology.
.... It means refitting industrial and commercial processes -- lighting,
heating, appliances, automation, etc. -- so that they, too, consume
far less energy than they do today. It means increasing efficiency,
reducing consumption, and building sustainable, long-term alternatives
in every arena in which the economy uses oil. ....

... the choice of these two alternatives -- Grab the Oil or
Energy Reconfiguration -- is much bigger than oil alone. It is a choice
about the fundamental ethos and, in fact, the very nature of the country.
Most immediately, it is about democracy versus empire. In economic terms,
it is about prosperity or poverty. In engineering terms, it is a matter
of efficiency over waste. In moral terms this is the choice of sufficiency
or gluttony. From the standpoint of the environment, it is a preference
for stewardship over continued predation. In the ways the US deals with
other countries it is the choice of co-operation versus dominance. And
in spiritual terms, it is the choice of hope, freedom and purpose over
fear, dependency and despair. In this sense, this is truly the decision
that will define the future of America and perhaps the world. [emphases added]

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
The Observer, Sunday February 22 2004

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.